Scott Davis

Messed-Up!

Synopsis

Author Biography

Scott Davis has been watching the World with puzzled incredulity since 1959. So far, the World has been perfectly content to ignore him – that can hardly continue, now that he's opened his big mouth and begun making observations ...

Author Insight

Evolution

Humanity is the first species we know of capable of transcending evolution.
The Darwin awards are evidence.

Book Excerpt

Messed-Up!

When it comes to Humanity, even the scientists are forced to admit, the whole damned process has come off the rails. Mankind is the only species on this planet (or any of the others, as far as humans know) that actively uses scientific and technological break-throughs to prevent evolution from weeding out the most idiotic of human behaviors.

A simple glance at man’s recent history will bear me out. Before fuses and circuit-breakers were invented, for instance, idiots were electrocuted, died, and often left no children to pass along the genes that encoded for that particular form of idiocy. In the past century, not only has fuse and circuit-breaker technology advanced to unparalleled heights, but law-makers, known to be among the most idiotic members of the species, have insisted that the law contain requirements to install these things, so that people stupid enough to use a blow-dryer in their shower survive to sue the manufacturer of the blow-dryer for not printing an explicit warning on the device that you shouldn’t use the damned thing in a shower or you could die.

It’s getting worse, too, as more and more idiots pass on their genes to new generations of totalfreaking idiots. Since the latter half of the 20th Century, the United States, arguably the most advanced country in the world, has been forced to print labels on, build safeguards for, or recall, anything that could even be remotely imagined to hurt anyone, under the wildest, most bizarre circumstances. Ever.

(Except, of course, for firearms, the manufacturers of which cannot be sued. When I consulted a lawyer on this point, he stated that you can only sue a manufacturer for unintended mayhem: since guns are designed to produce mayhem, it’s perfectly ok for them to kill people. After a moment’s thought, however, he noted that you could sue a firearm manufacturer if the firearm killed someone in a way other than that envisaged by the manufacturer – for instance, if the weapon exploded when the trigger was pulled. This idea seemed to inspire him, as his eyes began to gleam craftily, and he quickly moved off, speaking urgently into a cell-phone.)

There is, of course, a big problem with the idea of labeling things to prevent tragedy: it assumes people will actually read the label, and take the advice seriously. Hundreds of thousands of people every year fail to read the warnings, do the idiotic thing that the warning warns them not to do, and are saved from death by the safe-guards, so that they can pass on their genes to their increasingly idiotic off-spring. Along with the settlement proceeds from their increasingly idiotic, but successful, lawsuits.